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Chinese experts said executive orders from the last months of the Trump administration caused US index firms to remove Chinese companies from their indices, including the smartphone maker Xiaomi.

S&P Dow Jones announced on Wednesday that it will remove the shares of Advanced Micro-Fabrication Equipment Inc China, Luokung Technology and Xiaomi Corporation from its indices before market opening on March 15.

Affected by the news, Xiaomi's shares in Hong Kong ended flat on Thursday, yielding an intraday gain of 3.6 percent.

Zhao Qiuyan, a researcher with the industry portal, China Machine Think Tank, said the index firm commenced the removal as the Biden administration did not alter or rescind relevant executive orders signed by former President Donald Trump. 

Lü Xiang, an expert in US studies with the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) in Beijing, told the Global Times on Thursday that, without overrule from the Biden administration, those orders and most of Trump's crackdown policy on China in the field of trade and investment still stand.

The order that caused Xiaomi's removal was signed by the Trump administration in November. It bans US persons and companies from engaging in transactions in publicly traded securities of companies with ties with the Chinese military.

A number of Chinese companies listed in the US were affected but a loophole in the executive order left out US indices firms, many of which have listed banned Chinese companies in their indices. The indices firms are asked by the White House to do the removal.

China's securities regulator and Ministry of Foreign Affairs have strongly opposed the US move, pointing out that such actions are driven by political purpose and have downtrodden the lawful rights of global investors and turned a blind eye to the actual status of the relevant companies.

Lü urged the Biden administration to see the wisdom in reverting Trump administration's maximum pressure policy on China, as doing so is in the best interest of the US.